2463
by thehistorybuff1
Summary: Andrina Cross is a 16-year-old living in the underwater city of Maris. It is centuries in the future, and education and technology as we know it has all but disappeared. Our protagonist is forced to participate in the Sixteenth Selecting, where someone is chosen to travel to the surface and face whatever horror lies there. Nobody knows for sure what lies in wait... AU/OC


**WARNINGS: REBELLION, CORRUPTION, MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH**

**If you are here to read a story about "The Hunger Games", you are looking in the wrong place. This story has elements of "The Hunger Games" within it, but the ideas and characters are completely my own. :) I hope you enjoy this! Please leave a review below - I will always respond or send you a nice message to corroborate your awesomeness! :)**

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The dark waters press in from all sides of my weak, dispensable body, wrenching the breath from me and slowly squeezing the life from gasping lungs. Gulping for air, I claw my hands at the infinite waters and thrash hopelessly against the wicked hands of Death. Hot blood rapidly floods my mouth as I bite harshly down on my cold lips. The piercing machine in my breast sputters to a stop. Something in my brain snaps and plunges me into a desperate darkness.

Then I wake.

Wrenching my eyes open to stare at the infinite stone ceiling above, I draw breath after shuddering breath. My ragged fingernails scrabble on thin, scratchy covers; eyes flicker from one side of the cramped hovel to the other, registering the machine that slowly blips at my side. Tubes extended from the gray canister to taper off at my bruised chest, where it attached to the breathing vent. Sighing, I ripped the cursed tube from my chest, prompting a shrill wailing from the damned machine. A quick jabbing of my fingers abruptly silenced the contraption and I glumly slumped back on her bed.

The dreams had been occurring more and more frequently of late. With each dream, I would die a harsher death than before, and would wake with my heart stuttering with fear. I credited my doomsday dreams to the upcoming Sixteenth Selecting. Even thinking about that fateful day caused my hands to shake violently and beads of sweat to create a faint sheen on my pockmarked forehead. Then with a jolt I remembered: this was the day.

Ever since my ancestors had plunged down in a submarine three hundred years ago to escape a dying world rapidly disappearing underwater and created an underwater sanctuary – Maris – the Sixteenth Selecting had been tradition. Every decade, all sixteen-year-olds would be assembled in Shell Commons, where the Leaders would randomly choose one to ascend to the surface and find land. The Ambassador would traverse the dangerous waters alone. Fated to die or to return with the news the Leaders had been waiting for centuries to hear, the Ambassadors never had a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. Nobody ever came back; their names were erased from the census and forgotten forever. I desperately didn't want that to happen to me; I didn't want to be yet another name set aflame and forgotten – gone with the tide.

A resounding boom echoed through the caverns. The regal brass horn was calling the Maris to the Shell Commons for the Selecting.

The enclosed steel tubes were swamped with people surging towards the Commons; sinewy bodies pressed against one another as the weak were shoved against the cold metal walls; muscles rippled and rough hands shoved as the crowd excitedly surged forwards to discover the fate awaiting one unlucky teenager. I slithered through the bodies to emerge in the magnificent atrium. The walls were made of highly polished black marble, scavenged from the Marble Cliffs on the ocean's floor. The dim light from the small circular windows lining the perimeter of the ceiling created an illusion of softly rippling marble. Thousands upon thousands of steel chairs lined the walls for miles. As the theater filled, I became unable to see where one person stopped and another began. I took my place in the middle of a raised bronze platform with the thirty-two other kids and stared out into the audience, my chin raised defiantly despite my quivering heart.

The insatiable crowd finally began to quiet down, and the Head Leader – Aikken – stepped out onto the platform with the young teens. He turned to us, gave a jerk of his lips as if to smile, and abruptly turned to the audience. He raised his strong, sinewy arms and the Commons filled with raucous cheers and stomping that seemed to go on for several long minutes, as the restless victims of circumstance fidgeted uncomfortably. Aikken chuckled, holding up his arms again until the crowd silenced under his condescending, yet fatherly stare.

"Welcome, my dear friends!" his gruff voice rung out throughout the atrium, sending chills of anticipation and apprehension down the backs of all. I clenched my teeth, casting my eyes through the high windows at the wonderful world beyond, watching sharks circle the cavern. I blissfully zoned out for the rest of the tedious speech, and focused instead on the forbidden – the book I longed to be reading under my covers at this very moment, _The Origin of Species _by an ancient author, Charles Darwin. I longed to be stroking one of the numerous beautiful portraits of birds and dreamed of flying and experiencing everything from a bird's eye view.

My thoughts had drifted off, but I found herself snapped back to reality as Dizie, a black-haired beauty standing stoically beside me, gave me a hard pinch on the elbow. A surge of anger swelled suddenly up in my throat as I spun around, fully expecting to give Dizie a good hard slap in return, but then I noticed the box. All complaints were swallowed and dread festered in my soul.

The box was flat and rectangular, with a grooved and scalloped lid that used to be painted taupe. The box is now a dingy gray, but its beauty has still not escaped the eyes of its beholders. "In this box," proclaimed Aikken, "lies the fate of one of these lovely young people behind me. One of them will go up to the surface for one day and look for land. One of these young people might be our savior!" Cheers once again filled the Commons, as I felt my cheeks burn a bright red. Aikken slowly opened the box, and the audience strained forward in their seats to get a closer look. I, however, stepped away from the box and Aikken, my breathing vent stuttering as my heart rate accelerated. I knew what was coming, what would always come – I had prepared myself for this since I was a child. I had always been the chosen one, ever since my poor dead mother birthed me.

"And the one to venture up to the surface is… ANDRINA CROSS!"

A jolt shoots up my back as I hear my name called, and I sigh with resignation. A small part of me had hoped this day would never come, but it had, and it had come swinging. I forced a smile on my aching face and excitedly waved at the roaring crowd. My hand quivered slightly as I accepted the heavy monogrammed disk and hefted it above my head. It wasn't only the disk weighing down my arms, I realized. It was terror.

They tightly strapped me into my floater and gave me a day's worth of food: seaweed, three crabs, and a bottle of fresh water. Standing on the stained-steel launching pad, I hesitantly looked up towards what I supposed was the surface. I could see nothing but blackness and cold surrounding me and my home. Nobody had come to say goodbye; my family didn't care if I lived or died, and it's considered taboo for anyone except the Leaders to speak to me after I was chosen as Ambassador. Not that anybody spoke to me before. I gulped in the air my breathing vent was providing, and flexed my aching fingers.

_Cold. Crushing pressure. No air. Death. Emptiness._ I rapidly shook my head, refusing to let my nightmare come back and haunt me once more. It was only just a dream, after all. The only people in Maris who dared to dream ended up becoming sacrificial food for the sharks, gulper eels and dragonfish. Nobody tolerated imagining here – that's why the Sixteenth Choosing turned out to be rigged. The Leaders couldn't risk everybody letting their imaginations run wild, but instead chose one child every decade to take the place of Ambassador, and encouraged their education and freedom. They had secretly provided me with books to read when nobody else had anything, and had taught me to write when everyone else was illiterate. Such was the life of a lonely, intelligent child in a world of blinding ignorance.

The countdown began, and I tensed my muscles, ready for the journey. The ground quaked, all at once catapulting me headfirst through the water, up, up, and away. I shook within my armor with the force of the catapult, my brain rattling inside my skull and my ears rapidly popping I ascended. As the intensity of the pressure on my helmet increased, I had to squeeze shut my eyes to keep from screaming out in pain. It seemed like mere minutes when I emerged from the water like a torpedo, my helmet cracking open and falling away to reveal water-logged, choppy short black hair. My armor, having completed its duty of protecting its host from the crushing water pressure, fell off my shaking body and sank deep into the abyss.

I settled into the water, waves gently lapping against my body as I pressed my hands to my dark mossy green eyes. A yellow ball hangs in the calm blue sky, ruthlessly tearing at my tender vision. I had read about the sun inside a science textbook, but nothing I could've read could have possibly prepared me for the dazzling light streaming down from above. No light had ever permeated the depths of the ocean. I had never known such an ache could exist in my eyes – the light was piercing and unforgiving. It bore into my sockets; stabs of fire raced through my brain, leaving trails of smoke and fogging my senses. I am absolutely exhausted.

The dark blue ocean seems to shift under my eyes; the empty roiling waters reach out to meet the sky miles upon miles away. Who could've guessed that such a beautiful impossibility like the sun and sky could exist? I floated serenely on my back, spread-eagled and calm, my hair fanning my imperfect features as I slowly adjusted to the strange brightness. Then it hit me: _I am in the wild_. Ripping open my eyes, I splash over to my waterproof backpack carrying all my necessities. My hands roam amongst my belongings as I attempt to find my textbook describing the surface. Finding it, I flipped to the most worn section: _Birds_. The Leaders hadn't bothered to tell me one bit about the surface, but one let slip that birds still survived. Hence, all I have to do to find land is _follow the birds_. I had no complaints – birds are beautiful creatures, and I've always wanted to see one!

At just that moment, a shadow crossed over me. Flinching, I reached for my backpack as I looked up. What I saw made me stare in unbridled awe. Flocks of white birds with black-tipped wings circled overhead, cawing - their wonderful music filled my heart with wonderment and my face shone with fresh tears. Occasionally a gull would dive into the ocean and emerge a second later, a shining silver fish clasped in its claws. I treaded water for a little over an hour, just watching these beautiful birds, when I noticed they were departing. Frantically, I assembled my backpack and set off after them, my powerful strokes keeping me within vicinity.

Pale pink and fluorescent orange streak across the sky and illuminate cotton candy clouds; the orange sun peeps out from behind rolling waves. The birds have gone. I stretch my aching muscles that have propelled me so many miles and settle on my life raft. It's an odd sensation, being dry. Water droplets evaporate and soak into my skin before my very eyes, but it's hard to believe. I think about the Maris, all swimming below with no clue what the sky looks like when the sun departs, or what waves sound like as they slowly toss dancing fish into the air. I'm a clump of seaweed, gently floating amongst nothingness.

The sky fades to an almost imperceptible blue, a shade I've never seen before. No longer can I see the clouds scuttling along on its surface, or the occasional pinprick of light the textbook tells me is a star. I don't know if I'll survive this trip, but seeing this sort of unparalleled beauty eases my passing. I just hope that the land isn't this beautiful – I couldn't stand seeing the Leaders ravage this kind of beauty. I send a signal through the tracking device in my skull to the Leaders to they know I'm safe. I then settle down to a sleep devoid of nightmares.

I'm here. I can't believe my own eyes, but I'm here. Its bittersweet – the land proved to be so much more beautiful than I ever would have dreamed. It stretches for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, completely covered with reaching green plants and pastel flowers of every kind. I walk among beauty, I see beauty, I smell beauty, and I feel nothing but wretchedness. How can I consciously allow the naïve people of Maris come here and defile this beautiful land? How can I possibly turn my back on impossible life and destroy it in the next breath? How can I possibly defile hope in the face of a new day?

Yet – how can I possibly destroy the hopes of the Maris in finding new homes? How could I deprive them of living amongst sunshine and sunsets? How could I – after seeing what life could be – let them live in horrible, cold caverns instead of wide open fields?

The dolphins are waiting for me at the base of the island. As soon as I set eyes on their innocent and strong figures playing in the tide, I know what my fate must be. I know I'm turning my back on mankind in favor of the birds who have their homes in the wilderness and for the animals that enjoy peace. I'm preserving the beauty of those who fly happily amongst the cotton candy clouds and sing out their joy to the deaf creatures of the deep sea.

The dolphins chatter happily when they see me, and dance amongst themselves. I set off from the land the Leaders tasked me to find, and I never look back.

Its night now and I'm sitting on this black rock in the middle of the ocean. I don't know where I am, nor do I care. I sent the dolphins away. I'm alone. I have the switch in my hand – the one that will set off the bomb in my skull, killing me and erasing all information the chip recorded. They were going to kill me anyway – starving me to death or ripping the chip from my skull.

My life has always sucked, so it's only fitting that I'm to die after seeing the one thing that would make it worthwhile. I only wish that it didn't have to end this way. I wish that my life hadn't been spent in the dark oblivion of Maris. I shift on the rock, sucking in my breath as I scrape my hand against its side. Now my own blood really is on my hands. My breathing vent's fans whir faster and faster as my heart rate accelerates.

I see the whole of the ocean spread out before me, spreading farther than the eye can see. The gray turmoil etches itself in my brain; it so matches the turmoil I feel as I accept the immediate future. I know it will hurt like hell – there is no doubting I will scream like shit once my brain starts to melt upon itself. I smile bitterly – it's only now that I truly realize the hardness in my heart that comes with being of this cursed sea. I only wish I could tell my mother that I finally get what it means to be untouchable, unmovable, unwilling, strong – a Maris. It's not all it's played out to be. I have finally departed dreamland and seen reality, and then I died.

My finger presses the switch. Pain bursts like shards of glass digging into my brain as my skull is blasted away. I see my own blood spraying across the black rock and falling into the rushing sea. Hands are reaching for me – I hear agonized screaming – and there he is, laughing maliciously in my bloodied face, his bony fingers scratching my cheek; Death has come calling, and he comes in a cloak of bloodstained black, a gleeful smile etched across his ghostlike features. He calls my name… _Andrina… _his eyes are so cold…

Andrina's body collapses like a clump of seaweed against the black mass of rock; her glassy eyes stare up into the heavens. Vultures slowly circle the damaged body draped across her death bed, croaking in hunger. Blood coats the rough granite and runs off its sides in a waterfall. The moon shines bright on her upturned face; its diamonds scatter below.


End file.
